My Fair Lady, George Cukor, 1964

 

Adaptation of the theatre play Pygmalion (1914)

 

Summary:

 

In the mid XX’s century, Elizabeth Doolittle is a poor florist cockney (London’s working class). To know how to speak as a true lady, she asked to her professor to give her phonetic lessons. The professor did a bet with one of his friend: transforming Eliza, so she can pretend to be a Lady during the Transylvania embassy’s party. At the beginning, the lessons are not very helpful, until Eliza managed to say “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”. At this moment, she realized that she was in love with her Pygmalion.

At the embassy’s party, she managed to convince everyone, even a Hungarian linguist, who claimed that she was royal blooded!

This situation has changed the life of this florist and her father.  Thanks to the professor’s recommendation, her father managed to find another job, and had to give up on his extreme political opinions, in favor of the one of the middle class.

 

 

Critique:

 

This movie shows the differences of the education level according to which social classes’ people come from. The Cockney people, coming from the London’s working class , have a different accent compared to other Londoners, and they are criticized about it.

Especially in England, the different social classes can be classified by their language. Indeed, the way of talking and the words’ usage are very different; people can guess, only by listening to you, from which social class you are.